March Mammal Madness Vocabulary Practice Test

This question tests understanding of fitness, the measure of how well an organism passes its genes to the next generation. Fitness isn’t just about living a long life; it’s about surviving to reproductive age and producing offspring that themselves survive and go on to reproduce. In other words, fitness combines survival with reproductive success across generations, and it’s relative to what works in a given environment. A trait like camouflage might help you avoid predation, but fitness focuses on how many viable offspring your life history produces. So the term that best describes the ability to survive and reproduce in its environment is fitness.